


Learning Stillness

by sevsgirl72



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Alex Coburn, Being a spy means killing yourself, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:12:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2255442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevsgirl72/pseuds/sevsgirl72
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments that made “John Casey”, John Casey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I. 1973

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the ever fabulous Siggen1 without whom this would never have happened.
> 
> Trigger Warning: Implication of child abuse/wife beating (possible trigger), hunting(animal violence), torture, rape
> 
> Spoilers for the series: 
> 
> John Casey was born Alexander Coburn. Coburn “died” and John Casey was created. I haven’t seen the eps that explain it, so this is my take on it. It is canon compliant up until 2x09 “Chuck vs. the Sensei”. 
> 
> Casey’s girlfriend (wife?) and daughter never existed for the purposes of this story.

**I. 1973**

 

Alex crouched at the back of a darkened closet. His body taut as he watched - waiting - counting the beats of blood hammering in his head. He licked at a bead of sweat from the precipice of his top lip and let the stifling midday July heat crowd him into submission.

Alex had rushed into the closet as Roxy, the neighbour’s golden retriever, began to bark. The kids at the bus stop loved to tease him about being scared of that dog. Their shouts and jeers when he flinched at every yip and bark always made his face burn with rage and embarrassment. He’d tell them through clenched teeth, hands fisting at his side as he shook - restraining himself from lashing out - that it wasn’t true. He wasn’t scared. Not of that dog, or any dog. He couldn’t tell them. Not about what followed the barking most afternoons. Alex tried to fold further into the shadows as he waited.

A thin strip of light sliced down his face across one eye. The limited view of the front door was the only flaw in his hiding space. He still wasn’t strong enough to close the closet door all the way. The house was silent but for the soft snores of his mother in the kitchen and the crisp clink of bottles that came with each movement. She’d been there since last night. A mumble of ‘clean it’ was the only thing she’d said to him after he’d dropped his cereal that morning. Above the muted noises of the house he heard a car door slam followed by more barks. Alex inched further in to the back corner as a shadow broke the light streaming in.

“Stay still, be quiet,” he mouthed to himself as the front door crashed open. He had to be silent, motionless. Alex had to disappear. He watched from the dark as a pair of boots and jeans stamped past the closet toward the kitchen. Alex cringed and covered his ears against the smashing of bottles. The crescendo fell quickly into flesh smashing against flesh and ending in a thump of dead weight hitting the linoleum. Stinging sweat dripped into his eyes.

There was silence, for one long harrowing moment. Alex took a breath and began to relax. It was over quickly today. Then his foot slipped and hit the side of the closet. Alex flinched at the sound and curled himself up as tightly as he could, clenching his teeth against the anger that exploded within him as tears swelled in his eyes and burned their way down his cheeks. He was so stupid, couldn’t stay quiet, stay still. It was all his fault.

Footsteps left the kitchen and stopped in front of his closet, just out of sight. There was a whisper of leather slipping through denim loops. Alex closed his eyes against the bright summer day that lay beyond the front door left open and felt the cool suction of air against his face as the door was flung open. A large hand wrenched into his hair ripping him out into the light.

Alex was six years old.


	2. II. 1985

**II. 1985**

 

The clack of a round lodging in the barrel made his heart rate double. Alex took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he took aim. He tracked his prey with the sight and wondered if he knew he was being stalked.

‘Do you know I’m here?’ Alex mentally asked. ‘Do you know I am your end?’

His prey turned his crowned head and looked right at Alex, but didn’t move. Alex smiled against the rifle. He had chosen the perfect hide. He had disappeared in the dense camouflage of leaves and in his camo gear, his prey looked, but didn’t see. In the eternity of deaths that lay before this moment, and all those that would follow, this was his moment of becoming; He would bring an end. Alex pulled the rifle’s butt square into his shoulder, a perfect fit, and leaned into the weight. Taking one more slow deep breath, he squeezed the trigger as he exhaled.

The shot echoed among the trees and fifty yards away the buck slumped to the ground, forelegs first before the rest of the body fell to the side with a muted thud. It was a perfect shot, centre of the head up a few inches from the eyeline. The years of constant practice had served him well. Two years of learning the ways of the woods, trial and error mostly, with only a few books and the retired marine from down the street helping him. Alex hopped down from the tree, a reappearance in the world of the living. It had been two years since his mother had dragged them both to this backwoods to be near the prison. Two years since she’d last talked to him. Two years since he’d had his father arrested.

Alex remembered the day, the enmity of the situation still fresh, as he walked toward his kill. He had returned home from school to the usual scene: his mother passed out on the couch, TV blaring some midday infomercial. It was chilly in the house this late in October and  he put a blanket over her as he quietly cleaned up the bottles. He’d piled them in the crook of his arm, daring one to slip out of his grasp and break as he left through the kitchen and into the back to put them in the trash. He covered them over with old newspaper before collapsing against the bricks of the house. He stared out into the small yard, littered with old sheets of plywood and other building supplies: it hadn’t changed in the years he could remember. He was sixteen now, he could leave any time he wanted. Alex lit a cigarette and beat out a rhythm on his thigh as he took a deep drag. Any time kept stretching to tomorrow or next week every time he saw his mother. He really couldn’t leave. Though these few minutes were his favourite of the day, he was out of that prison-like stifling school, his job at the hardware store started in an hour, and his father wasn’t due home until after that. He was trapped. That man. Alex crushed out his cigarette violently against the brick. He sat down on some ancient lawn chair salvaged from the debris in the yard. Even though he couldn’t leave, not just yet, he was still planning it. A rash of thefts had hit the neighbourhood, the proof was stashed in a hole behind the drywall of his bed. When he could, when he needed to, it was there. Alex lit another cigarette stretching out and gazing up at the sky.

The front door slammed. Alex lept off the chair. There’d been no car door to alert him to the arrival of his father. No dog to bark either - Roxy died years ago. When the yelling started, Alex rushed back into the house just in time to see his father punch his sobbing mother in the face. She hit the floor and went still.

The whole scene seemed to slow while the rage began to race through his veins. Alex’s muscles began to ache as the rage that had been building up his entire life surged through him. His father turned from the figure on the ground and leered at him with a snarling grin. Alex was no longer afraid. He lunged at his father. A growth spurt a year ago have given him a head of height over his father, and though still lanky he was all wiry muscle and sharp elbows. His father crashed head first into the television and went still. It was over too quickly, the anger still coursed through him and with a primal yell Alex struck out with his fist leaving a large hole in the wall.

Then there was silence. Alex, breathing heavily, looked down at his father with a grunting snarl. The sight of the man sprawled on the floor caused the fury still burning in him to settle into a festering ball of disgust. It settled slightly when his looked at his mother. She was thankfully still breathing and he lifted her to lay on the couch. He’d had enough. If it went on any longer she would be dead, and he would probably just move on to some other woman. Alex had all the power now. He considered the gun in the closet upstairs. It would be finished in one loud moment. That would be too easy for the man, he deserved to suffer. Alex called the police. When they arrived he made sure they found the stolen things that he’d been hoarding over the past few month, they’d been for his escape, but this would be an equivalent.

Back in the forest Alex realized that, if it had been today, he wouldn’t have bothered with all of that. It would have been his father in the crosshairs, at the fate of his finger and they never would have found the body. He had still ended up trapped by a proximity to the man and his mother had no chance of moving on. Alex knelt near the felled beast and lay his hand on the warm body. Unlike this carcass, his father would have been useless dead just as he was alive and rotting in prison. Alex stroked his hand down the neck of the beast with a whispered prayer to the life that had been, a thanks for its sacrifice and life it would sustain.

He dragged the carcass to the camp he had set up that morning. Alex hung and bled the animal methodically. It would feed his mother for a couple of months when he was gone. Tomorrow he was leaving for Annapolis. He already knew the meaning of sacrifice for family, for life, but they would teach him sacrifice for country. Alex looked up at the hanging deer; he’d learn about the greater good.

Alex was eighteen years old.

 

 


	3. III. 1989

**III. 1989**

 

John Casey sat on the transport from Kabul staring at his own flag draped coffin. No, not his, Alexander Coburn’s. His muscles twitched underneath his dusty blood stained camo gear. His body was still battlefield ready and with every blink he saw dots; remnants of the muzzle flashes against the dark Afghan night. His gaze drifted from his empty box to the five others that lay beyond. Five other boxes that weren’t empty. A testament to his failure. Casey growled and lashed out kicking his box. It produced a hollow thud that echoed through the fuselage of the Hercules aircraft. The sound only further fueled his anger.

It was meant to be a simple extraction. Something they’d all been trained for. They’d run through all the intell back and forwards on the flight there. An American behind Russian lines in Afghanistan had intel that was sensitive to the Berlin conflict. All he and his five men had to do was jump in at night, pick the guy up and get him onto a transport for DC. The time lag between their intel and the facts on the ground was all it took. Instead of an extraction, it turned into a massacre. Casey punched the bulkhead relishing in the sharp pain that shot up his arm biting at his anger and crunching bone. It was the same place he hit nearly four days earlier...

“This is a simply night drop, ladies. Deploy shoots immediately after clearance.” Alex ordered smacking the bulkhead to get his teams attention. He knew these men, knew they were trained, but he also knew a couple that were cowboys. A show-off on this mission was the last thing he, and they, needed. “We don’t need any gymnastics out there, got it?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” The team responded.

The jump door began to open and Alex grinned at the sudden breathlessness . It still struck him with a flash of apprehension, the sight of the deep blackness they were to jump out into, but it was quickly overridden. This was the closest man would ever get to flying.

“Jump, Marines, Jump!” Alex yelled against the vortex of wind now ripping through the plane. “Ooh-rah!”

They jumped.

Alex watched carefully for the five shutes to deploy before he made his leap. This was always the most hazardous part and he had to force himself to breath. They had to jump far enough away from each other that they could not be shot down with one sweep of a anti-air gun, but close enough to land together and regroup as soon as possible. Every little glint of moonshine on the jumpers were muzzle flashes at first, before his training and reason stepped in.

One. two. three. four... Alex gripped the bulkhead, waiting for that last shute. His eyes scanned the darkness. Still only four. He knew it was Ryan, the fucking showboat. And finally the fifth one bloomed.

Alex jumped.

There is was the silence. He hung there in space, a weightless nothing, plummeting toward the earth and certain death.

Then he pulled the cord.

The shute yanked him out of his free fall, out of those milliseconds of blissful, freefall. In minutes he was hitting the ground, on his feet, stripping the shoot and rolling it up and out of the way. All five men checked in efficiently, and Alex directed them forward. It was an hour-long hike through dark rocky desert terrain and silence before reaching the compound.

Alex grouped the team behind an outcrop of rocks just beyond the compound’s perimeter and smacked Ryan in the back of his helmet without explanation. Even in the darkness Alex could tell the man was grinning. He hated Ryan’s cowboy attitude when it was accompanied by that grin.

They never made it to the compound. Before Alex could begin to direct them toward the fence the air rippled around them. Bullets began bursting through the air. Alex hit the ground firing back. He could see nothing in the dark except what was illuminated by interrupted muzzle flashes. A bullet hit the ground in front of him. Dust and sand was sprayed up into his face.

The next full memory he had was talking with the NSA director over a makeshift radio amidst the bodies of his team in an otherwise empty hut. He agreed to use this incident to their advantage. Alex looked down at Ryan. He’d failed them, failed to keep them together, keep them alive. He was to be declared dead and renamed. Alex Coburn would die a Marine and he’d become John Casey.

He said the name aloud slumping down onto the jump seat.

The name felt sticky on his tongue, as if he wanted to spit it out. It didn’t belong there. But that was who was displacing the space the casket had left vacant. His glare softened at the sight of stars and stripes. He wondered what type of life John Casey had had. If it was anything like his own he’d add it to that permanent festering ball of rage that he’d been holding onto. Force it down until he couldn’t remember it, because that was what would get him killed.

“Sir, ETA seven hours.” The pilot said over the intercom.

Casey grunted at the interruption as a heaviness began to settle in his limbs. The crash was coming. Maybe it was the exhaustion that was slowly sinking in, but he suddenly felt impossibly lighter. He’d never have to see his mother again, talk to her and get only a drink in the face or a blank glare in return. John closed his eyes and let the crash wash over him, descending him into sleep.

 

***

 

John Casey pushed the sunglasses back into place as he peered out from behind a large granite memorial in Arlington Cemetery. He watched as his, no, Alex Coburn’s casket was swallowed by the earth. John could see his mother begin to lose her composure as the first few dull thuds of earth hit the box. The remaining soldiers of his platoon shuffled by; familiar faces of someone else’s life. John had been there all day, through the five other funerals, waiting to feel something more than _this_. This feeling like a limb had been torn off.  He was still seeing life through Alex’s eyes: this was his funeral, that was his platoon, his mother. John wanted to kick himself.  The woman, crying over a grave was not his mother, it was Alex’s. He shouldn’t have come. He wanted the anger of those first few hour of his new life - or was it the last hours of his old life - back. Instead, all he had was this view of ant-sized mourners to someone elses life. John scratched at the collar of his starched white shirt. It was too hot to be wearing a black suit this late in the DC spring. He missed his dress blues.

Before the mourner’s dispersed completely, Casey turned pointedly and strode away from the grave yard. Away from Alex.  In the days of debriefing after the mission, John was told that Bennett would be his trainer and handler from here on out. He had offered to meet here. No, John thought venomously, he had been ordered to meet here. He could only guess at the reasons.

The man was waiting for him at the far end of the graveyard in a black Crown Vic. Casey got in though he didn’t look back toward the group still mourning, he kept them in sight as long as he could in the side view mirror.

Alexander Coburn died in the line of duty at twenty-three years old when John Casey came into being.

 

 


	4. IV. 1996

**IV. 1996**

John is awoken by a sharp stinging from his shoulders and a small sliver of light he could see through closed eyes. For a moment he thought he was back at home, back in his closet with the door he couldn’t quite close. He tried to fold himself up, push himself to the back of the closet, but none of his limbs would move. Somewhere he heard a dog bark and his entire body started to tense and he jerked backwards. He felt a breeze move across his face. When he finally cracked one of his painful, swollen, eyes open enough to see, he remembered; he was thousands of miles and a lifetime away from that closet.

The room was dim, empty and dank. He could hear the lazy whoosh of a fan overhead squeaking with rust at every pass. Serbia. The mission. It was a covert-op. The US was not supposed to be interfering in Serbia, and yet, here he was. There would be no back up. He was on his own.

The heavy metal door was unlocked from the outside and opened with a screech. Casey gritted his teeth against the assault on his ears.

Two men walked in, bending themselves through the small doorway and then a third, short and thin, followed. The large men flanked the third as the door was closed behind them. Casey recognized the one on the left; he was supposed to have been his contact, but now he saw him for what he was, a Serbian soldier. Casey snarled. Either his intell had be wrong, or he’d been played. John jerked angrily in his restraints, angry at himself. He should have known better.

“What is NSA doing here," the man in the middle asked. "It is not Americas interest to be in Bosnia.” His english was slurred and drawn out as he tried to pick the right words. Casey liked it when they had thick accents, it made it easier somehow. It marked them as other. Casey knew he would kill this man. He knew he would enjoy it too. John replied with a grunt.

The man he’d met with initially, Milos, came forward and pummeled his face with a meaty fist. Casey felt a tooth crack. When the man stepped back he spit it out at the men in front of him. The smaller man asked another question, but Casey didn’t bother listening. He knew how this was going to work now. When the second came forward, he spun the chair he was sitting in around to trip him up and pin him to the ground. Milos came forward again and Casey kicked him in the groin, hard. Casey bellow out this anger as he spun the chair to hit him in the face. It gave Casey a moment to pull at the chair, hoping it would have given in the struggle. He cursed his stupidity; he hadn’t realized it was metal.

As he struggled trying to either undo his restrained hands or some other means of escape, the smaller man stepped forwards and injected him with something. Casey halted immediately. What ever it was it took hold swiftly as his body began to feel heavy. He swayed, eyes twitching as the man with the syringe smiled. He saw the floor coming up fast, but was thrust into nothingness before he felt it hit.

***

“You are intriguing man,” a man’s voice floated through the blurred consciousness of John’s drug haze. He felt like he was floating, yet he was sure he couldn’t be moving; he couldn’t even feel his body. Maybe he was dead. No, because someone was speaking. “I have not met spy from America. Britain and Russia only. You are different.”

John felt a finger ghost over the bottom of his bare foot.  He wanted to flinch away, as full consciousness began to return, but his body refused to respond. He wondered where his boot had gone.

“Russians are barriers of cold and silence. You are fire and, what’s the word...” The man was thoughtful for a moment: “Passion.”

John still couldn’t see. He must be blindfolded. He was placed on his stomach, hands tied at his back, and his legs at his ankles. John jerked against the restraints when he heard the snap of leather in the air. He felt the man close in on him. Breath ghosted across his ear as the man leant over him. “You will break.” Casey wanted to growl, his hands ached to rip the man’s head from his shoulders, but his limbs betrayed him still. “Then, you will die.”

He tensed his entire body in anticipation of what was to come. When the first blow fell across the bottom of his bare foot John clenched his jaw against the pain, and forced his mind away from his body as he’d been taught by Bennett. Through this veil he only saw the red anger of revenge. The pain he would inflict on this man when he got free.

He didn’t feel the man stop, or hear the man leave, but he felt him move away as he descended into darkness again. He hadn’t felt the needle this time.

***

As John slowly became more aware, his body was still static, but he could open his eyes now. He was in a different position and he somehow knew what was going to come next; his legs were tied, spread eagle, to some kind of table. His upper body, draped over the top, arms stretched above his head and tied to something he couldn't quite make out. There were new sounds in the room, but it was an all too familiar one. The ghost-like whoosh of a belt coming out of pant loops, the clanking of a buckle. There was no more talking.

John took a long deep breath, relaxing against the assault he knew would be coming when hands gripped his hips. They had never mentioned this in training, but this was going to happen. John bit his tongue against the first ripping thrust, felt bile rise in his throat in the next. When the rope tying his hands began to burn on the third; it was a comfort. The rope kept eating into his wrists with each subsequent thrust from the man on top of him and John’s wrists, lubricated by blood, slipped out of the restraints. He saw his way out now, and forced his mind to remain attuned to every part of his body.

Casey stamped out his instinctive reaction to fight, to destroy. His body was still lagging behind his consciousness. He had to wait, stay motionless, or he wasn’t going to make it out alive. Instead with every gut wrenching painful thrust, he added it to his anger. He let the abomination of what was occurring form into a smoldering rage within himself.

When the man stopped moving, he knew that would be his moment. With every muscle and tendon poised now to strike all the pent-up rage and disgust he had gathered was unleashed. He bucked the man off his back, ripping hands free and breaking the table legs to release his ankles. John grabbed the man by the throat, and launched him across the room. The body hit the opposite wall and crumpled on the floor.

John couldn’t remember much after that, but he heard the rumors, years later, during another job; of the American spy that vanquished a VRS strong hold. The whispers held none of the valour of his military years, nor the pride of a job well done. Instead there was an immense blackness in his memory punctuated by a seething fury he felt in every fibrous muscle.

Alex Coburn was six years dead when John Casey walked out of Serbia, bloodied, limping and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.


	5. V. 2009

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a direct post-episode "Chuck vs. the Sensei" moment - may not make sense if you've not seen it.

**V. 2009**

John gave Chuck a mumbled ‘thank you’ before slamming the door. His rage was spent in the fight with Bennett. And now, In the quiet apartment, filled with observation equipment and weapons, the tools of a trade that had become his life, John felt adrift in a void.

The betrayal rankled. It gnawed away at the meager amount of trust he’d had, but even that felt like it had always been a lie. What did he know about trust or loyalty?

‘John Casey’ had only ever been a lie. Some name slapped on a piece of paper, a spy’s name, easily replaced from job to job, a violent force, but Alex Coburn had been a soldier.  He’d had family, his mother, friends, and a platoon that he failed. He’d taken this cowardly route of existing as nothing more than a shell. 'In the service of the greater good', he was told, but what honor was there in that when no one knows the price of the sacrifice?

John stared down at the bonsai tree he had trashed on the floor before leaving to find Bennett. He picked it up gently, cradling the roots and the soil in his hands. It had been Bennett’s parting gift to him as their training together was aborted. A last attempt to help John find his calm, or so Bennett had told him.

He brought the tree to the sink in the kitchen and lay it down attentively. If Bennett hadn’t worked out in three years what Chuck had in a year, it made John question just how long this man, the one that he’d been told to trust, had been a double agent. If it had been while training John for his new life, Bennett would have had every reason to not want him to achieve what he had tonight. It is a stupid move to arm your enemy before the war.

John left the tree there as he cleaned up the broken pot and soil left on the ground. Bennett had always made John’s inability to find calm feel a failure, it was what made Serbia such a failure. John shuddered at the memory. If only he’d known then what he knew now.

He rummaged through the cupboards of his kitchen, full of all the miscellaneous stuff the apartment had come with, and found a meatloaf tin that would act perfectly as a makeshift pot until he could find another proper Bonsai planter.

Maybe he didn’t have a calm centre, because 'John Casey' never had a centre. Inside he was still Alex Coburn, wasn’t he?  He picked up the tree from the sink and placed it in the tin, softly patting the soil down until it was set in enough to stay on its own. He swiftly moved it back to its usual spot and sprayed it with a dusting of water.

John gripped the edge of the table, bracing himself against it, looking inward trying to touch that centre that Chuck had found so easily, but all he felt were the small embers of an spent rage. And for once, he didn't bother looking for the calm, it was never a part of him, and now he finally felt whole. There was no more question about his efficacy of his skills, he’d surpassed his teacher, but he didn’t do it alone.

As John set himself in front of the camera feeds and began to dismantle his sidearm for its nightly cleaning, he accepted that. So much of what he’d lost when Alex Coburn was laid to rest were those connections. The other bodies and names that revolve around his life, make him who he was. He had never had those as John Casey, well, he thought he had with Bennett, but that was just as false as his name. He was finding those people now.

John’s hands moved without thought - just as Alex’s had been taught to -  removing the clip, clearing the chamber, locking the slide, seamlessly as he watched the feeds jumping between his door, the courtyard, Chuck’s window, Castle.  This was John Casey’s home now, the one to watch over and keep safe. He glanced at the security camera feed and grunted as he saw Chuck enter the courtyard. And this was the person he had to keep safe.

John unlocked the slide as he watched  Chuck cross toward his door on the monitor. He saw Bartowski, tie askew as usual, anxiously raising his hand to knock and he shoved the clip back into place at the first tentative knock.

John opened the door quickly. “Get in here, Bartowski.”

Chuck stepped tentatively inside, and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, waiting for the courage to say what ever it was he wanted, but patience was never his forte across either of his lives.

“What do you want?” John growled returning to finish reassembling his guns.

“The nerd herd, the car won’t start. Battery’s dead or something and there’s an emergency service call,” Chuck smiled, but ended up looking terrified asking him anything, especially after seeing the unleashing of John’s rage only hours ago.

Casey gave him an affirmative grunt and began to arm himself.

“That’s yours, isn’t it?” Chuck pointed to the triangle flag case atop the bookshelf. “Well, not _yours_ , but whoever you were before?”

Casey’s glare bored into  Chuck, forcing some explanation.

“There was something about it in the flash,” Chuck said sheepishly. “When I saw Bennett. Just a death certificate and an empty casket.”

Casey stood motionless, waiting for his anger to flare at Chuck, for having that stupid computer in his head, but it never came. Instead, he felt affirmation. Someone knew.

“You don’t look like an Alex, you know.” Chuck said as he was being hustled out of the apartment toward John’s car.

“I’m not.” John answered back without hesitation, and for once he believed himself. He wasn’t Alex Coburn. Not anymore.

John Casey was twenty years old when he turned forty-two.


End file.
